Day 21

　　"Hmn&" Shayma`s eyes snapped open and she jerked upright. "...I`m alive?"

　　She checked herself over, stretching and moving carefully to her feet. "And...just sore. And&" A grimace at the mess over her thighs. "Well, that was real enough."

　　Shayma wiped herself off with the bedding and then, despite the fact that I was pretty sure she badly needed a shower, slipped her clothing back on, frowning at the twigs still tangled in her tail. "I don`t suppose you have a bath?" She said to the room at large, and by implication, to me.

　　Unfortunately I didn`t. There were water sources outside, though. I could hear a brook, faintly, with one of my outside ears, so I opened the door to the outside. Which seemed to startle her again, the tail and ears flicking. "...I`ll be back for that thing later," she said, and padded out into the outside world. And soon enough, away from my sight.

　　I was sad to see her go, and not just because she was gorgeous. She`d actually addressed me, though what she thought she was talking to I didn`t know, but it had been nice to have even intermittently conscious company. The sex was pretty great too.

　　But I wasn`t going to keep her. I wasn`t that kind of person, or whatever I was, and given that she`d been toting an artifact for some reason she clearly had important things to do. And in fairness, I had somewhat less important things to do, like expanding in what ways I could, but I also wondered at Shayma`s request. Maybe I could do a bath.

　　It took a while to tap into the brook. It was further than I thought, and I didn`t want to expose myself too much. But with the boring beetles, it was much quicker than it would have been with roots.

　　I had to build a Monster Station to actually move the beetles out of my inventory into the real world, which sucked up half my biomass to make a large black cocoon in one of my spare rooms. The beetles themselves were exceedly simple to direct, since I could give them any point I could perceive and they`d go there, then dig how I wanted them. They did have to go back to the monster station now and again to, I assume, rest and to discharge what they`d accumulated from mining.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

　　The boring beetles cut small passages through which I could run little crawlways, now that I`d leveled Architecture more. I put a Maw underneath the breach where the brook was pouring down, which sent water into my inventory. Perfect. I sent the boring beetles after the ore deposits I`d found while I began to experiment with my new resource.

　　A tub involved Altering stone enough that the skill raised itself, but filling it was another matter. I could export inventory contents into whatever room I wanted, but getting it to pour out of a spigot in a reasonable way took practice.

　　[Fluid Handling] learned

　　Fluid Handling Category unlocked.

　　150 Experience gained.

　　Ooh. That wasn`t as boring as it might have sounded. Pumps, inlets, outlets...you could do a lot with moving water around and, just glancing through the architecture list, there were versions that were heat or corrosion resistant. Where someone might get such a thing as a corrosive liquid was left as an exercise to the reader, apparently. I had no ideas.

　　For heating the water, since a cold bath was just really underwhelming swimming, I put as many of my torches as I could cram into the space underneath, and Altered the stone there to be as thin as I could.

　　[Temperature Control 1] learned: Modify temperature of dungeon features and items.

　　150 Experience Gained.

　　So I could give Shayma a hot bath now, if she ever came back. Or a shower.

　　The boring beetles came back with their loads of ore, flooding my core with iron, copper, and magicite. The last one I could guess by the name alone, and sure enough I could reclaim it for mana. Fantastic. But...I still didn`t have anything I could do with any of that. Even my doorknobs were still stone or wood. But I could probably figure something out soon enough.